How should I put this? Let’s go with Fred Flintstone’s: Ya-ba-da-ba-doo!
Or the Doric: Loshminfitastoater. After precisely four months, I’ve been hairdressered. My lanky locks scissored. Sun-overbleached, straw-blonde tresses (think Marilyn Monroe in her dotage) devoid of shine or texture (unless you value the surface of the pan-scrubber) have been very deeply dye-potted.
And all those bizarre “styles” I’ve been sportin’ for a’ these weeks? Actually started off as a bit of a beehive Dusty, but gradually disintegrated into the whispy-haired Wicked Witch of the West. All I needed was the pointy hat. And the winged monkeys.
Look and listen around. Haven’t the vast majority of you lot, wifies and mannies, been complaining your hair has gone all “big and curly”? You lucky, lucky people.
We of the fine, thin brigade would give awa’ oor grunnies’ secret recipes for stovies to, just once, have big and curly on oor nappers.
Yours always looks alive and springy. Like it’s full of fun. Compare that to us; the lanky catsookins victims. Nothing will give the delicate hairs on oor heidies so much as a smidgeon of bon viveur. They just lie there. Straight and dead to the world.
Splatter them with industrial-strength mousse, heat-tong until they smoke, then gie it lalldie with the lacquer. And you still end up with just a coupla strands of user-unfriendly split hairs.
I’d been lucky, getting the very last pre-lockdown appointment on March 21, this week I was in for Tuesday July 21.
How to get there, not having been out in public for so long? Didn’t dare the bussie. Too many pyochin’, maybe unmasked, strangers.
Ordered a taxi, got instructions from company to wear a mask, then the driver turned up happily moo, nose and mask-free. Should I have refused to get in and demanded another cab? No time, so I trundled on.
Having felt last week a bit breathless behind those blue, concertina-effort coverings, I’d lashed oot on Amazon for what looked to me to be a looser style; like a triangular scarf, lug-looped, in loads of different colours. Altogether cooler and deffo (methinks) trendier.
Thought my quine would be deeply impressed, especially by my lateral Amazonian thinking. Reckoned she might even go for some hersellie.
Sez she, with that John McEnroe face: “I like the material, but you look like an extra from Lawrence Of Arabia.” So fit? Nothing wrong with that, I mused. In fact, quite glam.
However, once I bowled up at the hairdresser, including sunglasses, I could tell I was maybe a bittie OTT. A joker in the place declared as I entered: “And here is our celebrity Arabian Princess.”
Dynasty fae Buchan
Been immersed in the BBC Two series The Rise Of The Murdoch Dynasty.
Just wish there had been more details of Rupert’s family background in the Neest.
In 1884 Patrick Murdoch took on the huge challenge of transporting his wife, Annie, and his parents James and Helen from Pitsligo to make a new life for themselves in Victoria, Australia.
Patrick’s son Keith founded a newspaper, which Rupert eventually inherited. But I wonder: how would the history of newspapers – and the world – gone if Patrick and his family had stayed at home in Buchan?
Peer Bea’s secret walk down aisle
My heart goes out to Princess Beatrice. Having been scooped by her younger sister Eugenie in the super-duper, millions-watching wedding stakes, the peer craiter was blindsided. First by the Covid crisis and then by her Dear Daddy scandal.
Bea and her hunky Italian nobleman Edoardo (didn’t I fall in love with him on the boat to Capri in 1964? Or was it his padre?) had to cancel their plans and settle for what turned out to be a secret wedding at Windsor Castle.
Instead of thousands of guests and millions of telly viewers, the couple’s party counted barely 20 and only two photies were released to the public. But Beatrice’s wedding woes seem to have been her gain. And I suspect it was all the doing of oor affa clever Queen. No extortionately expensive wedding gown we could object to, Bea’s brilliant grunnie suggested the blisteringly beautiful gown designed for her by the legendary Norman Hartnelll in the mid 60s. And, la creme de la royal creme, Beatrice wore the tiara young Elizabeth wore for her wedding in 1947. Ticky bets Meghan tried to go for that one!
Plus the photies of the Queen and a seemingly refreshed Phil with the happy couple.
Could there be any more signs that HRH is hugely agonised over the problems with her favourite son, Andrew, but was desperate to make his daughter’s marriage a huge success? Wouldn’t all of us do the same?
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.